Society/Culture A basic income for citizens.

[Ratts of Tobruk]

No its not. Unless you are confusing socialism with capitalism?

Huh? Your description of socialism was wrong. Look it up.

Human nature involves all sorts of undesirable things we remove or punish through laws and regulation.

 

[VineyIsLORD]

No its not. Unless you are confusing socialism with capitalism? By its very definition socialism involves fixing prices.

No it doesnt.

 

[Seeds]

No it doesnt.

Nice toddler impersonation you are doing at the moment. You get when you have no arguments that you are admitting you are wrong even if it is only subconsciously.

 

[VineyIsLORD]

Nice toddler impersonation you are doing at the moment. You get when you have no arguments that you are admitting you are wrong even if it is only subconsciously.

You are making factually incorrect assertions based on nothing but your own poor understanding.

"No it isnt" is the only appropriate response unless you are prepared or able to offer the reasoning behind your assertions. At that point I can counter those reasons. But for now "No it isnt" is the only response I can make.

 

[The Edukator]

From the Carlton board. Thanks in advance jab!

Interestingly ( as of january 2016) Australia had a ratio of Household debt to GDP of 124% and Greece has a ratio of 62% and declining ...the GFC wasn't started by USA Government debt - it was started by default in mortgages - and you might like to know that 90% of Australian Household debt is invested in ..you guessed it...mortgages.

The average rental yield on investment property is now below the cost of financing so in aggregate summary terms - Australian Tax Law ( no capital gains on family homes) combined with massive incentives on an after tax basis to invest in property ( negative gearing ) combined with an annual forced savings of 9% into super ( SMSF can invest in property - in fact the only asset class one can legally borrow to invest in via a self managed super fund) are three artificial (Government tax policy) pumps blowing up the asset bubble balloon in this country - population growth ex immigration is not much higher than zero - and no last time I looked outside my window we don't seem to have a shortage of land in this country...

Strong economies take a long time of mis-management to turn nasty - in the early 60's and early 70's Greece had the highest per capita GDP per head of population in the OECD World, that is when the Greeks decided that sensible government fiscal policy was for the birds and tax paid was an option.

In Australia about 50% of all single tax units ( households) pay net negative tax after Government redistributions are taken into account ( middle class welfare) so along with prodigious ( and presently legal) tax shiftings going on by corporations - Australia is well on the way towards joining the broke and broken list of economies around the world.

However I take comfort from the fact that some boof in Canberra has estimated that the dividends from investment in education and the 'Green Economy' will start to pay-off in increased GDP in the later part of this century.

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

From the Carlton board. Thanks in advance jab!

The Carlton board must've improved since I last checked in. Must be what a few wins does!

But I have posted the same stats re: private debt in the neg gearing thread. The thread has been destroyed by a user hijack, but certainly removing the tax minimisation incentive of neg gearing will be a good start to reducing private debt and taking away a decent chunk of the unproductive inflation in property. I don't think SMSFs are that big a worry (so far), as the vast majority don't use them. And despite us having a lot of land in the country we are a very urbanised population and there are geographic boundaries (esp in Sydney) or planning that has resulted in sprawl instead of density. Basically the only way that property would drop hugely in value would be a huge economic problem that would be bad enough that any other problem would be relatively reduced in importance. Alternatively a radical change in planning laws would do it, but for that very reason planners and politicians won't do anything that drastic.

Both major parties and most minor parties say they want to stop corporations avoiding tax and "close loopholes". I believe Labor is more committed to it than the Liberals, but hopeful at least some small things would happen either way post-election. The "middle class welfare", if negative gearing is removed, is overwhelmingly pointed at families. I don't see it going anytime soon, but at least Gillard brought in a decent amount of asset tests for it. Labor is proposing increased Childcare payments if they win, which isn't asset-tested, but the idea of that is to get more people back to work for productivity's sake, so that isn't such a bad thing. Basically, I don't think there's reason to panic, but getting rid of negative gearing makes way too much sense for the Coalition to just ignore the issues as they're doing.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Spain gov't okays basic income scheme to

MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Spain's left-wing Government approved a minimum basic income ...

www.jamaicaobserver.com

 

[Scotland]

Spain has an unemployment rate of 15% and govt debt of $25,000 per capita.

What could possibly go wrong?